Hate speech

I hate Noam Chomsky. If I had the time to “monger” hate against him I would. (not really- this is rhetorical.  I just massively disagree with him)

My professor’s loved him, and I lived in a pro-Chomsky bubble in college. I’ve read most of what he’s written and this is why I think hating him is an informed decision.

However, I would never ask that anything he has said – even though I think it is pro-enemy propaganda and generally bad for society – be banned or that he be punished for saying these things.

The reason is, to quote Chomsky from Manufacturing Consent, that:

Goebbels was in favour of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favour of free speech, then you’re in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.

I got in a back and forth with a few people over Free Speech a couple weeks ago. From that I realized just how shallow the belief in free speech is, in particular when it’s being practised by your ideological opponents. This was confirmed again when I saw the letters in today’s National Post demanding police action against Salman Hossain. Hossain, a Mississauga university student, wrote comments on message boards expressing his hatred for Jews and wishing for the murder of Canadian troops. A Liberal Senator – Colin Kenny – has joined the calls for police action against this boy’s speech:

If he does not survive the court test and is convicted, that’s a message to folks that talking like that isn’t very smart.

But was has Hossain ‘done’? Nothing actually. You can read some of his comments on line, and for the most part, they’re abhorent, but they’re not out and out incitement. Until the point that he starts trying to organize people to go and do something, he’s not a criminal – he’s just a douche.

Hossain isn’t the only odious person whose free speech is currently causing controversy. Look at the Heath Ledger death. A radical Christian group has planned to – or maybe already has protested at his funeral. Their spokesperson said that they are protesting because:

You cannot live in defiance of God. He (Ledger) got on that big screen with a big, fat message: God is a liar and it’s OK to be gay.

They`re terrible. But it`s their right to be so isn`t it? They’re not shoving the corpse around, if anything they’re likely to be pushed around by the funeral-goers.

How about closer to home. No, not the Steyn case or the Levant case but the Ahenakew case and the Tremaine-Stormfront case. Both are surprisingly similar. Both men said vile things about Jews and both are now facing trial for this. Neither said we should go out today and bash Jews, they just expressed the opinion that Jews are bad and to blame for everything.

Here’s what Ahenakew said, and what he was originally convicted for:

The Jews damn near owned all of Germany prior to the war. That’s how Hitler came in. And he was going to make damn sure that the Jews didn’t take over Germany or Europe. That’s why he fried six million of those guys, you know. Jews would have owned the goddamned world … Look at here in Canada, Asper. Izzy Asper. He controls the media. Well, what the hell does that tell you?

Yes, he’s wrong, but what action is Ahenakew doing other than making himself look like an ass?

Take a look at this post here on my blog. I wrote about an Iranian student in St. John’s who sexually assaulted a woman in an elevator. Look at the comments – they range from insults to Canadians, to women, to borderline death threats – but none of them step over the line into incitement. In fact, I’m almost happy to have the comments there. I could spend an hour writing a post to explain how people like that are scum, and maybe I would convince you and maybe I wouldn’t – but if we have the right to read what they say first hand, I suspect that you’ll come to my conclusion much faster than if I just explained it to you.

This is my preferred argument for free speech. You know the saying: ‘It’s better to be quiet and have people think you are stupid than to open your mouth and prove them right’ ? I want to have a country that continues to let these people open their mouths and announce to the world what they really are.

Lorne Gunter in the Post has a better defence:

My number-one point about free speech is: We don’t want state functionaries determining which political opinions are and are not legitimate to express. In order to prevent your opinions and mine from being deemed illegitimate some day, we must today permit Salman Hossain to indulge in his malevolent rantings.

You can read the rest of Gunter`s column here.

You can exercise your free speech, hateful or otherwise in the comments below.

What’s atheist for ‘fatwa’?

I was reading the ‘Radical Muslim’ blog as I often do, and noticed that he had a list of ‘fatwa-worthy’ sites. Mine wasn’t listed there – though I wish it were. I was listed in recommended sites, which makes me think he hasn’t read this blog too carefully.

Right so what kinds of sites are ‘fatwa-worthy’?

[from Radical Muslim]…We must stop these sites that contain writings that slander Islam, to detail and criticise national and global conflict, poverty, injustice, oppression, the Far Right and the BNP, Zionism, the War on Terror, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the illegal occupation and oppression of Palestine, the slaughter in Sudan and the persecution of Muslims and the current war on Islam.

Therefore I call on all transgressors to stop publishing anti-Islamic pictures, articles and blasphemous publications against Allah (SWT) and His prophet, Muhammad (SAW).

Two can play at this game. We atheists need a term of some kind, equivalent to ‘fatwa’. I don’t want to just call it ‘atheist fatwa’ that’s derivative. How about fatuus. It’s the Latin root for fatuous – i.e. ’supid’ or ‘insane’. The direct translation would be foolish or insipid. Fatuus can be used to deliniate sites that are balls-out, bat-shit insane.

So, what should we call a fatuus on? Let me borrow a little here:

We must stop these sites that contain writings that slander Atheism and Secularism, to detail and criticise national and global conflict, poverty, injustice, oppression, Crypto-Fascists of the Left and Right, Islamism, the War on Freedom in Europe, the 2001 Declaration of War on the West, the illegal occupation and oppression of people everywhere, including in the Western Sahara and Kurdistan, the slaughter in Sudan and the persecution of atheists, apostates, freethinkers and gays.

Therefore I call on all transgressors to stop publishing anti-Atheist or anti-Secularist pictures, articles and to stop publishing irrational publications.

So – who’s first?

I’m in Vancouver, so let me start at home. That picture is from a site run by a woman in West Vancouver named Bev Kennedy. It’s a hate site called Jihad Unspun. Among other things, it features slide shows that glorify terrorists and glorify the killing of the ‘kuffar’. The ‘kuffar’ is translated as ‘deniers’ or in other words, ‘atheists’.

I declare fatuus on Bev Kennedy, Jihad Unspun and on Google News for choosing Jihad Unspun as one of the sites they index for “News”.

I may also declare a fatuus on myself for being a hypocrite and looking into filling a hate speech complaint against the site.

Any other sites fatuus-worthy? Or any other BC Atheists interested in joining me in filling the complaint against Bev Kennedy?

More on the Rushdie Knighthood

Nick Cohen is one of those writers whose name I would get in a fist fight to defend. He’s the originator of the Euston Manifesto and a militant for the west and for true progess. He’ll be on Shire Network News’ podcast for the next 2 weeks.

Here he is on the Rushdie Knighthood:

Rushdie’s knighthood was a sign of the changing mood. Labour politicians might have tried to impose a veto a few years ago; instead, they said: ‘Are we going to allow British policy to be decided by dictatorial bigots, who want to inflame religious passion to divert attention from their own corruption?’

There is only one possible answer to that question and it remains astonishing how many people who profess liberal sympathies refuse to grasp it. Watch the discussion about Rushdie on last week’s Question Time on the BBC website. You will see Shirley Williams, the representative of the Lib Dems and member of the great and the good, fail to offer a word of protest against men who would murder authors. All she does is condemn the government for honouring a novelist, until Peter Hitchens, a Mail on Sunday columnist who is usually dismissed as a spittle-flecked loon, reminds her that she needs to clear her throat with a few words of criticism for his would-be assassins, if only for form’s sake.

The rest of the article is here

The video to which he refers is below:

Anti-Rushdie Book-Burner: “The freedom to offend is a necessary freedom”

As you may have notice, parts of the Islamic world have been going mental over Salman Rushdie’s knighthood. This isn’t the first time though. Back in 1989, when his book, the Satanic Verses, first came out, there was the same indignation and the same violence and of course the fatwa (religious decree) demanding his death.

Never forget that 1. too many people in the west like John Le Carre, Pope John Paul II and others sided with the book burners ; 2. A fatwa isn’t an idle threat. Yes, Rushdie survived but his Japanese translator did not. That translator’s name was Hitoshi Igarashi. Several other translators and publishers in Europe nearly shared Igarashi’s fate – but fortunately, they survived their attacks.

I found an article in the Guardian by one of the original book-burners from 1989 – British Muslim Inayat Bunglawala:

..when the Iranian Islamic leader, Imam Khomeini delivered his fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s death, I was truly elated. It was a very welcome reminder that British Muslims did not have to regard themselves just as a small, vulnerable minority; they were part of a truly global and powerful movement. If we were not treated with respect then we were capable of forcing others to respect us.

If you follow the British press, Bunglawala’s isn’t a novel statement. But this is – he repents:

Looking back now on those events I will readily acknowledge that we were wrong to have called for the book to be banned. Today I can certainly better appreciate the concerns and fear generated by the images of book-burning in Bradford and the calls for the author to be killed. It seems crazy now, but I really did believe that some committee of learned elders should vet all books before they could be sold to the public…The freedom to offend is a necessary freedom.

Read the rest here…

While you’re there, I’d encourage you to scroll down and read the comments, Bunglawala jumps in there and clears up a lot of weak points in the main article.